Mainstream media fails to set people against Crimea’s reunification with Russia

Date of publication: 16 03 2017, 18:57

Commenting on the recent results of a poll showing that many Europeans and Americans see Crimea as Russian, Spanish sociologist Javier Colomo Ugarte told Sputnik that it is a vivid illustration of the mainstream media’s failure to persuade the public that Russia’s reunification with Crimea was illegal.

More than a third of Italians and Germans perceive Crimea as part of Russia; this view is also held by 26 percent of Britons, 23 percent of Americans and 20 percent of the French, according to the latest poll released by Sputnik.

Commenting on the results, Spanish sociologist, Doctor of Historic and Geographic Sciences Javier Colomo Ugarte told Sputnik that it is largely a product of the Western mainstream media’s failure in trying to persuade their audience that Crimea is not Russian. However the MSM propaganda has nothing to do with the actual facts, he said.

“Historically, Crimea was part of Russia. With regards of its transfer to Ukraine by then Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, it was a spontaneous decision made without any consideration of the will of the people,” he told Sputnik.

The fact is, he said, that the mainstream media never discloses the real facts. He cited as an example an actual coup d’etat which happened in Ukraine in 2014, which brought to power illegitimate authorities.

The residents of Crimea, he said, expressed their will to reunite with Russia. The entire procedure was entirely in line with international law.

Nobody is going to condemn the Spaniards who refused to accept the rule of Franco (Spanish general and dictator Francisco Franco (1892-1975) who ruled over Spain from 1939 until his death), who also came to power as the result of the coup d’etat, he said. Spain then started to fall apart not only due to political but also due to geographical principle.

If, for example, Catalonia had not then failed, it would have been an independent state by now. And hardly anyone would contest it.

Similar developments are going on now in Ukraine, he said. The Crimean’s should not be punished for refusing to accept Kiev’s coup d’etat which led to Poroshenko taking power. Kiev should admit its defeat in the case of Crimea. If the Ukrainian authorities don’t come to their senses, the same thing might happen with Donbass, he said.

As for the poll results, the sociologist said, the people who took part in it have been persuaded that what happened in Ukraine in 2014 was a “revolution.” However voters seem to have a differing opinion about Crimea. And this is despite the best attempts western mainstream media to propagate Washington’s point of view. It only proves, he said, that it is very hard to prove the “illegitimacy” of Crimea’s reunification with Russia.

The US and its European allies seem to have played an important role in the reunification, he said.

“I have no doubts that NATO leadership wanted to deploy its military infrastructure on the peninsula. And Russia, evidently, would not allow it,” he concluded.